Maintaining or increasing current levels of aviation safety with tripled capacity and traffic flow is a daunting task. Supporting pilots' awareness and ability to respond accurately and quickly to potential hazards is a critical element to acceptable future safety levels. Yet pilots' task and information loading in the emerging US Next Generation (NextGen) and Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) environments could significantly increase, leading to increased potential for errors and increased safety risks rather than the hoped for decreases.
Existing aircraft advisory systems issue advisories independently of advisories of other aircraft advisory systems. For example a Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS) system may issue an advisory to “descend, descend.” However, if the aircraft is flying close to terrain, the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) system issues an advisory “terrain, terrain”, “pull up, pull up” Just such incidents were reported to the NASA Aviation Safety and Reporting System (ASRS). In this time-critical, stressful situation, the pilots had to decide on their own which alert would take precedence and the appropriate action to take. Indeed this decision was made even more difficult by the blaring audio alerts. Each system was designed with its own goals and objectives. Since the systems are separate and independent they do not have a common framework to share intent. The pilots were left on their own to de-conflict the alerts.